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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638468">Heaven</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiCas/pseuds/DemiCas'>DemiCas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Season 11 Ending, Canon Divergence, First Kiss, M/M, Songfic, Sort Of, brief non-explicit smut, mood piece, there—I fixed that for you, we all know this is how it should have gone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:47:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27638468</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemiCas/pseuds/DemiCas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Heaven<br/>heaven is a place<br/>a place where nothing<br/>nothing ever happens</i>
</p>
<p>The Talking Heads, “Heaven”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Heaven</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The beginning of this fic was inspired by the song “Heaven” by the Talking Heads. Go listen to it, especially the Stop Making Sense version, which has awesome harmony. It will rock your world.</p>
<p>Many thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/profile">Oceaxe</a> for the read through and kind words. Luv ya!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I</p>
<p>
  <em>The band in heaven<br/>
they play my favorite song<br/>
play it once again<br/>
play it all night long</em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>There is light everywhere.</p>
<p>It’s so bright he thinks he shouldn’t be able to see, but he can. He feels as if his eyes should burn out of his head, but they don’t. It’s overwhelming, but it’s not.</p>
<p>There is nothing here but light and something smooth and hard under his feet. He can’t see it for the light, but it’s solid, so he walks. Any direction and no direction. He casts no shadow.</p>
<p>There is a sound. He doesn’t notice it at first, but as he walks anywhere, nowhere, he begins to feel it, coming up through the soles of his feet, thrumming in his chest. It’s music, maybe, but played so low and slow that there is no melody. Or maybe it’s machinery, or the wind, or the ocean. He stops for a moment to listen, but he can’t resolve it. It’s present, like the light: ubiquitous and persistent, suggestive and meaningless.</p>
<p>He walks.</p>
<p>He doesn’t think; there is nothing to think about. There is nothing but light and the sound/vibration/music and himself, and he barely registers himself. If he stopped and considered, he might remember his name, his life. Pain, joy, love, hate. But he doesn’t stop, overtaken by the momentum of his body, the ease of movement, the only thing that seems real.</p>
<p>There is light. There is sound. There is nothing else.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Something changes. It’s so gradual he almost doesn’t notice, as he no longer notices the sound, almost doesn’t notice the light anymore. Just a shadow, perhaps. In the corner of his eye, something not so bright. The sound that surrounds and fills him changes, too, when he notices the difference, becomes clearer, as if it’s leaning towards meaning, if only for a bare moment. The shadow flickers in and out of the edge of his awareness, disappearing when his focus shifts to the movement of his body, trembling into being when he loses that focus.</p>
<p>One moment passes into another and the shadow is darker, solid enough now that his mind begins latch onto the incongruity. Thoughts begin to form. He begins to wonder, to question.</p>
<p>He turns. The shadow is there, wavering like a dark flame. He walks towards it, half-expecting it to flee him, like a rainbow chased across an open field, but it does not. It happens slowly, but the shape does grow larger, accreting mass and form: tall, slim, solid. Human-shaped.</p>
<p>He slows a little, emotion beginning to stir in the blankness of this thoughts. He feels his hands begin to shake, his breath to quicken.</p>
<p>Suddenly it is before him. Form coalesces out of darkness, out of light. Eyes look into his, a pale face goes paler still with shock and recognition.</p>
<p>He gasps. He feels as if he has fallen from a great height, as if he has been transported a thousand miles in the space of a single second. Everything rushes around him like a gale, all his memories and knowledge, his past, his present, his future.</p>
<p>Because it’s Castiel, solid and real in this tenuous place. Castiel is with him, here at the end of the world.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>II</p>
<p>
  <em>There is a party<br/>
Everyone is there<br/>
Everyone will leave<br/>
At exactly the same time</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Castiel starts forward, one arm outstretched, and there’s something in his face Dean isn’t sure how to read, something he doesn’t dare put a name to. “Dean.” Castiel sounds breathless, as if he has been running for miles. “You’re alive.” When Dean doesn’t move, Castiel stops, hand still extended, fingers flexed. “Dean?” Hesitant this time.</p>
<p>Dean does not reach out to take Castiel’s hand. He stands still, very still, in the limitless light and sound. “Cas.” His voice sounds strange in this place. “What are you doing here?” He flicks his eyes away, back. “Where <em>is</em> here?”</p>
<p>Castiel drops his hand,  his face and body freezing, waiting. His eyes search Dean’s. “What do you remember?”</p>
<p>Dean inhales. He thinks back, to before the light. It is surprisingly difficult, like trying to remember the creation of the earth.</p>
<p>“I remember…Chuck and Amara. Amara said the sun was going away because Chuck was dying, that she would die, too. But they worked it out and fucked off to do a brother-sister vacation or something. Then nothing. Then I was here.” He looks at Castiel, who is regarding him now with an unreadable expression. “What about you?”</p>
<p>Castiel looks away. “I was with Sam. We were entering the bunker, and…and…” He turns back to Dean, brows knit in frustration. “I don’t remember any more. There was a tugging sensation, then, here.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, wherever <em>here </em>is.”</p>
<p>“Dean…” Castiel says. He takes a step forward, almost too close.</p>
<p>The bright air pulses with sound. Dean is suddenly very, very tired.</p>
<p>“So,” he says. “Are we dead?”</p>
<p>Castiel takes a half step back again, turning his body a little away. His hands hang limply at his sides. “It’s possible, I suppose, but—”</p>
<p>“But what?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know where we are. We are not in Hell, nor Purgatory…” His voice falters.</p>
<p>“Heaven?” Dean asks.</p>
<p>Castiel hesitates, then shakes his head. “This is like no Heaven I’ve ever seen—so formless and bare.” He looks at Dean. “<em>You</em> should be in a Heaven of your own design, a place and situation that brings you greatest happiness.” His mouth twists in something like a smile, but it’s crooked and small. “On the road, perhaps, in your ‘Baby.’”</p>
<p>He pauses, goes on before Dean can even think of a reply. “But if this is Heaven, I…<em>I</em> should not be here at all.”</p>
<p>“Cas…”</p>
<p>Castiel’s voice changes, becomes harder, almost bitter. “I’m an <em>angel</em>, Dean. I have no soul, only grace. No one knows where angels go when they die, if they go anywhere, but they most certainly do <em>not</em> go to Heaven.”</p>
<p>Dean opens his hands. “Then, what?”</p>
<p>Castiel shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to us, why we two are here, why Sam is not. We could be anywhere.” He frowns. “Well, except Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, of course.”</p>
<p>Dean laughs without humor. “Right back to where we started, then.”</p>
<p>“I’m afraid so.”</p>
<p>They stand looking at each other for some period of time—Dean has no idea how long in this strange, changeless place.</p>
<p>Dean breaks first. He steps forward, lays a hand on Castiel’s arm. There must be some static electricity in the air; the hair on his arms stirs, lifts, and his scalp prickles. “Okay, it’s just another problem, right? We do this all the time. We’ll figure it out.”</p>
<p>Castiel looks down at Dean’s hand. “Yes, of course,” he murmurs.</p>
<p>Dean takes his hand away. It’s warm. He hadn’t thought of it before, but it is chilly here—the light is bright, but cold. But now his hand is warm. He frowns and shoves both hands into his pockets.</p>
<p>“Listen,” he says, “I walked around for a while, then I saw you. I guess it was you. A shape, and then there you were.”</p>
<p>“Are you suggesting we ‘walk around’ and hope someone else appears?” Castiel asks doubtfully.</p>
<p>Dean shrugs with one shoulder.  “Or maybe we’ll eventually get somewhere else.” He looks at all the nothing around them. “It’s not like there’s much else to do.”</p>
<p>Dean starts walking, not looking to see if Castiel is following, because he knows he is.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>III</p>
<p>
  <em>When this kiss is over<br/>
It will start again<br/>
It will not be any different<br/>
It will be exactly the same.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They walk for a long time. Or perhaps they don’t. It’s impossible to tell.</p>
<p>Dean can feel Castiel beside him, can see his shape in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t turn to look, but he finds the angel’s proximity to be strangely comfortable, even comforting. Dean notices that they are walking in step. He thinks he should find that odd, but he doesn’t.</p>
<p>“D’you hear that sound, Cas?” Dean asks after more or less time.</p>
<p>“I have noticed a vibration, yes.”</p>
<p>Dean falls silent for a while. His thoughts seem to be moving slowly, but at least they are moving. “What do you think it is?” he says eventually. “I thought at first it was music, but I dunno—sometimes I think there are words, but sometimes it just sounds like nothing.”</p>
<p>Castiel halts, and Dean halts with him, almost perfectly in unison. Castiel tilts his head as if listening.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure,” Castiel says slowly. His brow is furrowed. “It might be music, played very slowly. Or it might be speech, also very slow.” His eyes shut, and he is still and silent.</p>
<p>“No,” he says at last. “I can’t make it out. It seems to mean something, but it’s just out of reach of my understanding.” He shakes his head. “It’s very frustrating.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Dean says, though he actually doesn’t find the situation frustrating. It’s just a thing he can’t figure out, so he shunts it away and forgets about it.</p>
<p>He starts walking again; Castiel falls into step beside him. Castiel seems a little closer this time, close enough that Dean could reach out and touch his hand, if there were any reason to do so.</p>
<p>Nothing happens.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Did you see that, Dean?”</p>
<p>Dean turns to look at Castiel. “What? Where?”</p>
<p>Castiel gestures off to his right. “I thought I saw something. A flicker of shadow maybe. A difference in the light.”</p>
<p>Dean squints. “I don’t see anything.”</p>
<p>Castiel stares into the void. His left hand is twitching slightly. Dean watches it. “No, it’s gone.” Castiel’s voice is heavy. “Maybe it was never there.”</p>
<p>An emotion rises, prodding at Dean’s numb heart. He suddenly hates the defeat in Castiel’s voice, hates that there is sadness in his eyes. He reaches out, touches Castiel briefly.</p>
<p>“It’s okay, Cas. It took a while for you to beam in, too. Maybe it will come back, whatever it is.”</p>
<p>Castiel’s expression shifts, relaxes. “Perhaps you’re right. You took a while to resolve as well.”</p>
<p>They resume walking.</p>
<p>“How did you find me?” Dean asks, wondering why he hadn’t asked before. A lot of things seem to slip away from him here.</p>
<p>Castiel doesn’t look at him—his eyes are fixed on the far distance, though there is nothing there to look at. “I didn’t. I think you found me.” He makes a noise that Dean can’t interpret, then says, “All I remember is coming through the bunker door with Sam. We were tired. We were…we thought you were dead, Dean.”</p>
<p>Dean looks down at his feet, disconcerted by the sudden pain in Castiel’s voice.</p>
<p>“Then there was a flash, and a split second of disorientation, and I was here,” Castiel continues. “I was lost. I think for a long time that I just stood still, my mind a blank. Then I began seeing a shape, in the distance. If I turned to look at it, it disappeared, but it always came back.” He turns his head then, and there is a small smile on his face. “Then I saw you. You were a shape, a shadow, then you were <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p>Dean finds himself smiling back. It feels strange, but good. “Yeah. Kinda the same here, except I was walking.”</p>
<p>“Ah.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They fall silent for a while. Everything is the same. The light never wavers. The sound beneath, above, around them throbs and undulates, but never resolves into anything they can pin their thoughts on. There are no things, here—no objects or actions or reason or meaning. The space around them is as undifferentiated as solar plasma, as uncommunicative as the space between stars.</p>
<p>Dean feels something stirring. He’s building something up, in his body, under his skin. A challenge to the nothingness that mocks them. A challenge to himself.</p>
<p> “Nothing happens here,” he says.</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>Dean swallows and clenches his hands into fists, just to feel something besides the relentless rhythm of walking. “Are you sure this isn’t Hell?”</p>
<p>He sees Castiel’s head swing towards him, though their pace never falters. “No part of Hell I’ve ever seen, and I saw much of the Pit when I fought my way to you, all those years ago.” He looks forward again. “But I take your meaning.”</p>
<p>Dean stops—is surprised, almost, that he can. “We need to <em>make</em> something happen,” he says.</p>
<p>Castiel stops too, not in sync this time, but two steps out of step. He turns and gazes at Dean. “What can we do? And what will it accomplish?”</p>
<p>Dean reaches out and curls his fingers into the front of Castiel’s trench coat. The fabric feels smooth and rough at the same time. He thinks he can feel every thread in the weave. He watches his thumb rub against the rough stitching of a buttonhole. “If we <em>do</em> something, we won’t feel dead,” he says.</p>
<p>“But, Dean —”</p>
<p>Dean raises his eyes, sees confusion in Castiel’s face, and he knows. He <em>knows</em>. Suddenly everything is rushing and moving, and he feels things, things he had forgotten in this void of light, things that stand in sharp relief against the nothingness, sharp and aching. He takes a deeper breath, something coming unmoored inside him, and he says the words he should have said years and worlds ago.</p>
<p>“Kiss me.”</p>
<p>Castiel’s expression goes blank; his lips part, moving soundlessly, then, “Dean?”</p>
<p>Dean looks down again, at his hand over Castiel’s coat, over his heart. “I know — I mean, I <em>think</em> you want to,” he says. “And I want to. I do. I want you to.”</p>
<p>Castiel’s hand covers Dean’s, warm and dry. “Yes.” His voice is impossibly low, full of portents. “Yes.”</p>
<p>Dean finds he is shaking, his hands, his body. He can’t meet Castiel’s eyes. “So, do it,” he whispers.</p>
<p>“Look at me.”</p>
<p>Commanded, Dean obeys, sees Castiel’s eyes wide and wondering. Castiel reaches out with his free hand and touches Dean’s jaw, and the touch sparks on Dean’s skin like embers. Castiel half-closes his eyes and leans in and presses his lips to Dean’s.</p>
<p>It’s soft, tentative. Dean presses back, just as gently, and then they pause, lips barely parted, just breathing into each other’s mouths. The universe seems to stop, and Dean can feel the <em>something</em> building in him again: not lust, not desire—or not simply desire—but something more primal, more essential. It is a question, the feeling of Castiel’s hand on his cheek, Dean’s hand on Castiel’s chest, the rest of their bodies almost but not quite touching.</p>
<p>Dean pulls back and searches Castiel’s face for the answer. “Tell me you want this, Cas.”</p>
<p>Castiel’s voice is breathless. “I want this. I want <em>you</em>.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They fall into each other, then, like two galaxies colliding, the heat of a thousand billion suns, but so slow and vast that Dean has time to feel every shift of skin against skin, every touch and stroke and press, to taste every molecule of sweat, saliva, and come. He takes Castiel in completely, and Castiel expands and fills him to the edges and corners. When he is full to bursting, Dean turns and pours himself into Castiel until Castiel cries out Dean’s name like God proclaiming <em>fiat lux</em>.</p>
<p>They fall into each other, and they fall out of time and space, and they fall down to the hard, white ground, breathless and aching and so full of joy that it feels like grief. It feels like the opposite of dying.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>IV</p>
<p>
  <em>It’s hard to imagine<br/>
that nothing at all<br/>
could be so exciting<br/>
could be this much fun</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They don’t have to eat here, or drink or piss or shit. They do not sleep or rest, hardly pause for breath before they find each other again, hands and mouths devouring each other. There is no hunger but the hunger of their desire, no pain but what they inflict on each other, accidentally or not.</p>
<p>They fumble at first. Dean has little experience with male bodies; Castiel has little experience of any kind at all. But they seem to have all the world and time, and soon (or late) they are kissing as if the only oxygen was to be found in the other’s lungs, touching as if to be separate for even an instant would be fatal.</p>
<p>Dean pulls Castiel’s lip into his mouth, bites until the blood comes, then licks it clean, gentle and reverent, as if the wound is a sacrament.</p>
<p>Castiel holds Dean down, one arm pulled up behind his back to keep him still as he pounds into him like the Wrath of God, while Dean howls and blasphemes and begs for more.</p>
<p>Dean fucks Castiel’s mouth until tears pour down, and after he spills down his throat, Dean stoops and cradles his face, kissing him and tasting the metal and salt of his own come on Castiel’s tongue. Castiel sobs in gratitude, and Dean whispers praise and thanks against his hot skin.</p>
<p>Castiel rocks gently in Dean’s lap, riding up and down in a slow, lazy rhythm, his hands spread across Dean’s shoulder blades like wings. Dean closes his eyes and sings “Hey Jude” into Castiel’s open mouth.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They need no rest, have no bodily desires beyond each other, but eventually they slow, touches moving from desperate to exploratory to gentle. They map each other’s bodies completely, each dip and curve and divot, every smooth line and subtle imperfection. Castiel traces Dean’s scars with fingers and tongue; Dean tangles himself in Castiel’s firm body, legs wrapped around legs, hands in hair, skin slipping over skin.</p>
<p>They slow, they breathe, they…stop.</p>
<p>They lay a long (or short) time on the hard surface of their world, quiet now, the only sound between them their low breaths, the occasional gentle murmur of sounds that are not words but something deeper and more meaningful. The place is chill and bright, but they are warm in each other’s arms, eyes half-closed, just being.</p>
<p>Then something rises up in Dean, a memory, sudden and bright and painful. He feels grief and shame rising with it, even here wrapped around Castiel like it was what he was created for.</p>
<p>“Cas?”</p>
<p>Castiel looks at him, his eyes widening in surprise, as if he had forgotten what speech was and is shocked by its sudden intrusion into their silence.</p>
<p>Dean strokes Castiel’s arm. “Remember,” he says slowly. “Right before I went off to face Amara—remember I told you that you were my brother?”</p>
<p>“Yes.” Castiel sounds hesitant.<strike></strike></p>
<p>“I lied.”</p>
<p>Castiel makes a small noise, like a wounded bird. He twitches in Dean’s arms, but Dean holds him closer and rushes on. “I lied, because I was too afraid to tell you the truth, that you weren’t my brother because you were more than that. I was afraid to tell you even there, at the end, that I…I…” Dean’s throat closes; he can barely breathe, much less speak, and it takes him a long moment before he can find his way back.</p>
<p>“I was afraid to tell you I love you.”</p>
<p>Castiel stares at him for a moment, then breaks into a smile like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It is so beautiful Dean doesn’t know if he can bear it.</p>
<p>“I love you, as well, Dean. I have always loved you, even before I knew I could.”</p>
<p>Dean whispers, “I know.”</p>
<p>Castiel tilts his head a little to one side. “Then what were you afraid of?”</p>
<p>Dean shrugs and buries his face in Castiel’s neck. Castiel smells like sweat and ozone and power. “I don’t know. Nothing. Everything. I was afraid of you being an angel. I was afraid of you being in a male vessel, afraid of what people would think. I was afraid of hurting you, of being hurt by you.” He looks up at Castiel again; Castiel’s eyes are clear and unjudging. “I was afraid to let anyone else in. There was Sammy, but he was always there, and that was enough of a burden, you know?”</p>
<p>Castiel takes in a sharp breath, but Dean stumbles on. “And I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it. So I tried to hold you off. I was a dick to you. I made fun of you or got mad at you when I shouldn’t have. I held you to impossible standards. I wouldn’t forgive you.” His voice cracks. “’Cause, ’cause…I knew that if I let you in, and you left me, like every other damn thing I ever loved, I’d just break, that’s all.”</p>
<p>Dean feels something cool on his face and realizes with a start that it’s tears. He doesn’t know whose. “So…I want to say I’m sorry, okay? I’m ashamed of myself, more ashamed than I’ve been about just about anything. I pushed you away just because I was afraid of being left behind.”</p>
<p>Castiel strokes Dean’s hair, kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids. “Shh,” he says gently. “It’s all right. Everything is all right now.”</p>
<p>Dean feels himself begin to tremble. “Is it, Cas?”</p>
<p>“Yes, it is.” Castiel pulls back and fixes Dean with that solemn, eternal gaze, daring Dean to deny him. “We have both erred, Dean. We have hurt each other, sometimes terribly, but in the end we always come back. Back to forgiveness.” He smiles a little, just a lifting of one corner of his mouth. “So, yes, it is all right. I have what I need most; I am content.”</p>
<p>The air around them hums, then, resonating like a struck gong. Dean feels a momentary qualm, a surge like ice water rushing through him, then the feeling is gone, drowned in the warmth of Castiel’s body, the reassuring sound of his voice humming a tune Dean doesn’t recognize.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“There it is again!”</p>
<p>Dean’s body jerks as Castiel’s voice brings him out of whatever dream he’d fallen into. They are still entwined on the ground, wrapped around each other like animals seeking warmth in a storm. Dean tightens his grip on Castiel’s shoulder. “What? Where?” he manages.</p>
<p>Castiel is craning to look over Dean’s shoulder without actually loosing his hold. Dean tries to turn his head to look behind him, but it’s useless. Reluctantly, he disentangles himself from Castiel and sits up. “Where?” he asks again.</p>
<p>Castiel sits up as well and points behind Dean and to the left. Dean twists his body to follow the gesture. “It was there,” Castiel says. “But it’s gone now.” His voice is heavy with disappointment.</p>
<p>Dean squints into the distance, as if anything here in the formless light is further away or closer than anything else. As if there is any <em>thing</em> here at all. “Yeah, I don’t…wait.” He narrows his eyes even more. “A little more to the right. Maybe a shadow?”</p>
<p>Castiel gets slowly to his feet. “Yes!” he says. His body is taut, like a greyhound straining at its lead. “Damn, it’s moved. No…there! There!” He starts to run.</p>
<p>“No!” Dean cries, scrambling after him. “Don’t go bolting off, dammit! We have to stay together!”</p>
<p>He sprints after Castiel’s fleeing form, dwindled to almost nothing in the few short seconds of lead, but, bandy-legged through he is, Dean is <em>fast</em>, and the fear clogging his throat begins to dissipate when he sees he’s catching up. He barely registers that they both seem to be wearing all their clothes again.</p>
<p>Suddenly Castiel is right there, and Dean nearly runs him over in his headlong flight. He checks himself just in time, grabbing Castiel’s arm and swinging him around a little to face him.</p>
<p>“What the hell, Cas?” he pants. “There’re no landmarks here. What if I’d lost sight of you?”</p>
<p>Castiel is not looking at him, but at something over Dean’s shoulder. “There,” he says. His voice is oddly flat.</p>
<p>Dean turns slowly, and there it is, a gash in the air, a dark wound in the bright world, not black but dark, dark red, like venous blood. The lips of the gash are quivering.</p>
<p>And suddenly the air is shimmering with sound, bell-like and insistent. Dean thinks it’s the same sound as before, but louder, almost painfully so, and it sounds as if it’s speeding up, rising in pitch, sounds detaching from other sounds. Becoming words.</p>
<p>Castiel understands before Dean does, teasing the meaning out of the slowly shifting vibrations in the air. “<em>Dean,</em>” he says, and somehow Dean knows he’s quoting; his name sounds strange and new in Castiel’s mouth, “<em>you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you.</em>”</p>
<p>Dean feels like someone’s just punched him in the chest. “What?”</p>
<p>Castiel turns to him. “That is what the sound has been saying, all this time. Too slowly to follow, before, but now that it has sped up some, I’ve been able to decipher the words.” He pauses, and his eyes are troubled. “The message is for you. Do you know what it means?”</p>
<p>Dean’s skin is prickling; he feels as though electricity is sluicing over his entire body. “I…I remember now,” he says numbly. “It’s the last thing Amara said to me, before she disappeared with Chuck.”</p>
<p>Castiel looks around at the vast white emptiness, his eyes narrowing when he catches sight of the wound in the world. “<em>This</em> is what you need most? All this nothing?”</p>
<p>“Remember—” Dean coughs, tries again. “Remember when we were talking, and you said you had what you needed most?”</p>
<p>Castiel’s eyes go wide. “I got chills, man,” Dean continues, “though I didn’t remember Amara then. But now…” He looks at Castiel as if he has never really seen him properly before. He looks at that beautiful, careworn, <em>beloved</em> face, and suddenly his heart is so full he’s not sure what to do with it. He places his hands on Castiel’s cheeks, and he smiles. “You, dammit. <em>You</em> are what I need most.” Then he wraps Castiel in his arms and kisses him like it’s the only thing left to do, like it’s the only thing that makes sense in the entire world.</p>
<p>“But Dean,” Castiel says breathlessly when they break apart at last. “Why here? Why <em>this?</em>”</p>
<p>Dean leans forward and presses his face into Castiel’s neck. “I don’t know.” A thought occurs to him, then, and he laughs against Castiel’s skin. “Maybe she thought we needed some time alone? Like, we were never going to get our asses in gear if we had any distractions?”</p>
<p>Castiel chuckles, and it’s still such a rare thing that it makes Dean smile. “Perhaps. This place, where nothing happens—it held the potential for anything and everything.”</p>
<p>Dean kisses him again. “You’re so deep.”</p>
<p>They eventually pause, and Dean sees Castiel’s smile of wonder change to a troubled frown. “But what is that?” His head gestures behind Dean, at the wound in the air.</p>
<p>It seems nearer. “The way out, maybe?” Dean says doubtfully.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t look very inviting.”</p>
<p>Dean shifts in Castiel’s arms until they are side by side, facing the gash. “Yeah. Even Purgatory was friendlier-looking.”</p>
<p>Dean feels Castiel shrug. “Still, it’s the only thing here, apart from ourselves.”</p>
<p>“Yeah.”</p>
<p>They stare at the slash for a while. The sound in the place has settled again to slow and sonorous, as if, once they’d deciphered its meaning, it is lazily sitting back to see what they do. The light is still bright and cold. Still nothing happens beyond the faint fluttering at the edges of the gap.</p>
<p>“We could stay here,” Castiel says eventually. “There is no pain, no monsters. No Mark, no Darkness. Just you and I.”</p>
<p>Dean turns to stare. “Are you <em>serious</em>, man?”</p>
<p>Castiel smiles, that little, private smile he gets sometimes when he thinks he knows something Dean doesn’t. “Of course not. Although I appreciate its role in ‘getting us off our asses,’ this place is terrible beyond words.”</p>
<p>Dean breathes out a short laugh. “You said it, Cas.” He lowers his arm from around Castiel’s shoulders and takes his hand. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”</p>
<p>Castiel merely nods, and then they are moving together, not in step, but side by side, fingers entwined, eyes forward, chins high. The lurid red gash gapes as they approach, widening and pulsing. A wind blows up from behind them, pushing them on. It whistles past their ears, obscuring, though not completely drowning out, Amara’s slow and final benediction.</p>
<p>They pause at the edge of the hole. There seems to be nothing inside but a dark red void, like a sea of old blood.</p>
<p>Without speaking, they turn and kiss, then they straighten their shoulders and step through.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>V</p>
<p>
  <em>Heaven<br/>
heaven is a place<br/>
a place where nothing<br/>
nothing ever happens</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Put the gun down,” Sam says warningly.</p>
<p>“I said stop.”</p>
<p>Castiel reaches out from behind the woman confronting Sam and presses two fingers to her left temple. She collapses slowly; he does not catch her.</p>
<p>Sam gapes at them, his expression blank with shock. They all stare at each other for a long, long moment.</p>
<p>Then Sam is surging forward, his face alight now with relief and wonder. “Dean! Cas!” He goes to hug Dean, but when Dean doesn’t let go of Castiel’s hand, Sam pauses, eyebrows climbing. Dean smiles a little, gives a small shrug with one shoulder. Sam grins and envelops them both in his long arms.</p>
<p>“Hey, Sammy,” Dean says softly. “Miss us?”</p>
<p>“I thought you were dead.” Sam’s voice is choked; his arms are shaking a little.</p>
<p>“Yeah, we thought we were, too, for a while.” Dean pats Sam on the back with his free hand. His eyes sting, but remain dry. “But I’m okay. <em>We’re</em> okay.”</p>
<p>Sam pulls back and gives them both a long, considering look. “Yeah?”</p>
<p>Dean looks at Castiel. Castiel smiles, a little shyly, eyes flicking down, then up again. “Oh, yeah,” Dean says. In this particular moment, he can’t remember what he was ever afraid of.</p>
<p>Sam laughs and squeezes them both again. “About damn time.”</p>
<p>Dean’s foot hits something soft. He looks down. “Oh, hey. So, who’s Angry Spice here?”</p>
<p>Sam follows Dean’s gaze, and his eyebrows arch as if he’d completely forgotten what was happening before.  He shrugs. “Oh. Her. Long story. It can wait?” He glances at Castiel.</p>
<p>Castiel nods. “She will sleep for some time,” he says.</p>
<p>“Good,” Sam says grimly. He scoops up the woman’s gun, and after some rummaging in a side table, handcuffs her to a pillar. He doesn’t make her comfortable.</p>
<p>He turns back to them and breaks into another dimpled grin. “I’m going to grab us some beers, and you’re going to tell me everything.” He pauses, and his cheeks go pink. “Okay, maybe not <em>everything</em> everything, but why you’re alive, how you ended up together, all that. Like, where <em>were</em> you?”</p>
<p>Dean looks at Castiel. “Nowhere,” Castiel says in that grave, slow way he has sometimes.</p>
<p>Sam looks puzzled. “Yeah,” Dean says. “It was weird. There was nothing there, man. Just this white light and this weird sound. You couldn’t even see what you were walking on.”</p>
<p>“Nothing happened,” Castiel adds, and Dean thinks he can see a shadow flickering in his eyes.</p>
<p>“And he doesn’t mean that, y’know, metaphorically.” Dean clears his throat. “We thought maybe we were dead, that maybe we were in Heaven. Or Hell.”</p>
<p>“Were you?” Sam asks in the small silence that follows.</p>
<p>Dean shrugs. Castiel gives his hand a little squeeze. “I don’t think so, no,” Dean says. “We think Amara made the place and put us there.”</p>
<p>Sam’s eyebrows jump. “<em>Amara</em>? What the hell?” He frowns. “And yeah, what about that? And Chuck? And the soul bomb?”</p>
<p>Dean laughs a little and raises a hand, warding off Sam’s questions. “Yeah, yeah—I’ll tell that story later, when I have a beer in hand, but for now let’s just say that I did Amara a solid, there at the end, and I think what happened to me an’ Cas was her idea of paying me back.”</p>
<p>“What the hell, dude?” Sam says, shaking his head.</p>
<p>Dean falls silent, feeling suddenly shy and uncertain. Castiel squeezes his hand again. “Dean thinks she put us there, in that empty, lifeless place, so we would…” He pauses, and Dean’s afraid he’ll say “get our asses in gear,” but Castiel simply smiles softly and says, “so we would be able to…come together without any external distractions.”</p>
<p>“Sure it wasn’t heaven?” Sam teases, but gently.</p>
<p>Dean shrugs. “Who knows?”</p>
<p>He turns to meet Castiel’s gaze, then, and in those blue eyes he sees everything they’ve ever done to each other: sacrifice, betrayal, forgiveness. He sees every smile and frown, feels every blow and embrace, hears every angry word and desperate prayer. Dean breathes in deeply, as if it’s the first breath drawn in a newborn world.</p>
<p>“But you know what? It doesn’t matter,” he says, never taking his eyes off Castiel’s face, and Castiel smiles at him, luminous with joy. “’Cause we got what we wanted. What we needed. And <em>that’s</em> what matters.”</p>
<p>They turn, then: they turn their backs on Heaven; they turn their backs on Hell. They turn to the future, to each other—to home.</p>
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